The original pitch for dating apps was that you could match with anyone.
“Swipe. Match. Chat. Date.” That was the promise Tinder made when it launched more than a decade ago, and it predicted a never-ending cycle that many users are now lamenting.
Now they want to match with you of One.
Big names in the dating industry, including Match Group's Hinge and Tinder, Grindr, and Bumble, are investing tens of millions of dollars in artificial intelligence, hoping to beat each other and AI-driven startups in the ultimate dating game.
Technically speaking, AI and machine learning have been used in dating app algorithms for years, but these generative AI features take it a step further.
The companies say the results will be more meaningful, resulting in better matches and fewer swipes. As Grindr CEO George Allison said on a recent earnings call, it's nothing short of “magic.”
“We're in a platform shift with AI,” Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff said during a panel discussion at Los Angeles Tech Week in October. AI is “changing everything” for the company's dating app, he added.
This space is ripe for change. The big players are struggling. User abandonment occurs frequently as a result of “swipe fatigue,” and many users are unwilling to pay for premium features.
Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff called AI a “platform shift.” Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union
“It's been a really long time since we've had new reasons for consumers to get excited about dating, whether it's technology, platform or brand,” Sam Yagan, co-founder of OkCupid and former CEO of Match Group, told Business Insider.
Match Group's stock price has fallen more than 75% over the past five years. The company reported quarterly results last month that missed Wall Street's expectations for profit and revenue. The category was down 5% year over year last quarter, as it struggles to convert users into paying customers.
Meanwhile, Bumble's stock price has fallen more than 50% this year alone. The company laid off 30% of its workforce over the summer, and the app's paid users fell 18% year over year last quarter.
“We've been through this period over the past few years where people started signing up, and there was a question of why,” Morgan Stanley analyst Nathan Feather told Business Insider. “The product simply doesn't work as well as people expect.”
Startups want to exploit that weakness. Several new apps have raised millions of dollars in the past few years. Just this month, Hinge founder Justin McLeod stepped down as CEO to launch his own AI dating platform.
Robot, robot, match me
Cupid, matchmaker, ads, dating sites, swipe apps.
No matter how you slice it, they're all trying to solve the same problem. In other words, it will help you find your perfect match. Companies say AI could do better than all of the above.
It makes sense for AI to penetrate this space, Rick Heitzman, co-founder of FirstMark, a venture capital firm that doesn't invest in dating companies, told Business Insider. A matchmaker is a type of agent, and anything that can be agentized is suitable for AI, he said.
Whitney Wolfe Herd returned to Bumble as CEO in March. Dear Dipaspil/Getty Images
For leading companies, finding the “better fit” is the ultimate goal of AI investments.
Hinge is working on improving its matching algorithms, and Bumble has an AI product it plans to roll out next year. They also use AI for profile creation, flirting, trust and safety to speed up the matching process.
Tinder continues to move forward. The app is piloting Chemistry, a matching feature that provides users with a “daily drop” of their ideal match based on their date's camera roll and their answers to a series of prompts. The goal is to match based on value rather than photo popularity, ultimately reducing swipes, which have been central to branding.
Tinder's Chemistry feature is still being tested, so its appearance may change. crater
It's important to have fewer swipes. Hilary Payne, Tinder's vice president of product, told Business Insider that AI-driven matchmaking is a way to stay competitive in the attention economy.
“AI is driving personalization in all consumer apps,” she says. “The more we can do to effectively guide you toward stimulation, connection, conversation, and hopefully a date, the better the experience will be for you.”
Even Grindr, long considered more of a dating marketplace than a matchmaker, is trying its hand at AI.
Grindr, which gained a reputation as a place where gay men go for short hookups with faceless profiles, has added an AI-powered recommendation feature. There's a “For You” feed, which contains profiles of users who might be good matches, and an “A-List,” which is another recommended match feed based on profiles the user has already chatted with.
Whether these AI capabilities will work and whether they will become widespread remains an open question. Tinder's Payne said Chemistry is doing well with Gen Z, the app's key demographic. AJ Balance, Grindr's chief product officer, said recommendations were a “very strong early hit.”
Raymond James analyst Andrew Malloch said: “You can't just take an unpopular product, put AI on top of it, and say, 'Okay, now we have a popular product.'
Grindr uses AI to power its recommendation features, such as A-List. grinder
Longtime Grindr user Paul Lazo is not impressed. The 33-year-old video editor from Philadelphia has been using the app for 11 years and currently pays $19.99 per month for the pro version.
He found the recommendations lackluster.
“I'm really interested in bears and big men,” Lazo told Business Insider. But Lazo said his “For You” page is full of young, healthy men.
This feature is new this year and may continue to improve. A Grindr spokesperson said the For You product is still powered by older machine learning.
other fish in the sea
Before the likes of Tinder and Hinge catch up, a new group of AI-first dating startups are waiting to attract dissatisfied users.
“AI has the potential to create two multibillion-dollar companies in the same way that mobile created Tinder and Bumble,” said Yagan, co-founder of OkCupid and former CEO of Match Group.
For example, the app Sitch has raised a total of $9 million since its launch in 2024, charging users $90 for three matches. Its AI is trained based on co-founder Nandini Muraj's experience as a real-life matchmaker. It provides daters with several “setups” each week and provides an AI matchmaking chatbot.
“I understand that some people have been burned in the past,” Muradi told Business Insider in April. “We come in and say, 'There's a business model shift, there's a whole platform shift.'”
A new similar app has emerged that touts AI as a hurrah for dating apps. Known, Ditto, and Amata each launched AI matching apps this year.
Amata users chat about their preferences with an AI matchmaker. Screenshot via Amata
Additionally, players who aren't traditionally romantic are also being challenged.
Facebook is introducing an AI dating assistant that acts like a matchmaker, combing through the platform's users' rolodex to find “someone you're likely to take home with your parents” or “a tech buddy from Brooklyn to go to an EDM concert with,” product manager Neha Kumar told Business Insider in October.
There are some celebrities lined up behind Facebook. Amanda Bradford, who founded The League and sold it to Match Group in 2022, put money into a “dark horse” of incumbent companies to get the most out of AI.
“They're the only real 'tech company' out there, the only company that's really invested in and has real talent in product, engineering and AI,” Bradford said.
Still, it will be an uphill climb for startups. For a dating app to be successful, it needs to reach a critical mass of users.
“There are huge benefits to existing companies,” says Heitzman, the venture capitalist.
